Dressed for Death (24 page)

‘I think that will be all for
today,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet. ‘I appreciate both your time and
your candour, Signor Ravanello. I’m sure this time is very difficult for you.
You’ve lost not only a colleague, but a friend.’

‘Yes, I have,’ Ravanello said,
nodding.

‘Again,’ Brunetti said, extending
his hand, ‘let me thank you for your time and your help.’ He paused a moment
and then added, ‘And your honesty.’

Ravanello looked up sharply at
this but said, ‘You’re welcome, Commissario,’ and came round the desk to
accompany Brunetti to the door of the main office. They shook hands again, and
Brunetti let himself out on to those same steps down which he had followed
Ravanello on Saturday afternoon.

* * * *

Chapter Eighteen

Because
he was near Rialto, it would have been easy for Brunetti to go home for lunch,
but he neither wanted to cook for himself nor risk the rest of the
insalata
di calamari,
now in its third day and hence suspect. Instead, he walked
down to Corte dei Milion and had an adequate lunch in the small trattoria that
crouched in one corner of the tiny
campo.

He got back to his office at
three and thought it might be wise to go down and talk to Patta without having
to be summoned. Outside the Vice-Questore’s office, he found Signorina Elettra
standing by the table that stood against the wall of her tiny office, pouring
water from a plastic bottle into a large crystal vase that held six tall calla
lilies. The lilies were white, but not so white as the cotton of the blouse she
wore with the skirt of her purple suit. When she saw Brunetti, she smiled and
said, ‘It’s remarkable how much water they drink.’

He could think of no adequate
rejoinder, so he contented himself with returning her smile and asking, ‘Is he
in?’

‘Yes. He just got back from
lunch. He’s got an appointment at four-thirty, so if you want to talk to him,
you better do it now.’

‘Do you know what kind of
appointment it is?’

‘Commissario, are you asking me
to reveal a confidence about the Vice-Questore’s private life?’ she asked,
managing to sound properly shocked, then continued, ‘The fact that his
appointment is with his lawyer is one I do not feel myself at liberty to
reveal.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Brunetti said and
looked down at her shoes, the same purple as her skirt. ‘Then perhaps I better
see him now.’ He stepped a bit to the side and knocked on Patta’s door, waited
for the ‘
Avanti’
that answered his knock, and went in.

Because he sat behind the desk in
Patta’s office, the man had to be Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. But the man
Brunetti saw sitting there resembled the Vice-Questore in much the same way a
police photo resembled the person it depicted. Usually bronzed to a light
mahogany by this time of the summer, Patta was still pale, but it was a strange
kind of paleness that had been laid down under a superficial coating of tanned
skin. The massive chin, which Brunetti could not glimpse without calling to
mind photos of Mussolini seen in history books, had lost its jutting firmness
and had grown soft, as if it needed only another week to begin to sag. Patta’s
tie was neatly knotted, but the collar of the suit under which it sat looked as
though it needed to be brushed. The tie was just as bare of tie-pin as the
lapel was of flower, creating the strange impression that the Vice-Questore had
come to his office in a state of undress.

‘Ah, Brunetti,’ he said when he
saw the other man come in. ‘Have a seat. Please have a seat.’ In the more than five
years Brunetti had worked for Patta, this, he was certain, was the first time
he had heard the Vice-Questore say ‘please’, other than to strain the word
through tightly clenched teeth.

Brunetti did as he was asked and
waited to see what new marvels were in store.

‘I wanted to thank you for your
help,’ Patta began, looking at Brunetti for a second and then glancing away, as
if following a bird that had flown across the room behind Brunetti’s shoulder.
Because Paola was gone, no copies of
Gente
or
Oggi
were in the
house, so Brunetti could not be sure of the absence of stories about Signora
Patta and Tito Burrasca, but he assumed that this was the reason for Patta’s
gratitude. If Patta wanted to credit that fact to Brunetti’s supposed
connections with the world of publishing rather than to the relative
inconsequence of his wife’s behaviour, Brunetti saw no sense in disillusioning
the man.

‘It was nothing, sir,’ he said,
quite truthfully.

Patta nodded. ‘What about this
business in Mestre?’

Brunetti gave him a brief account
of what he had learned so far, concluding with his visit to Ravanello that
morning and the man’s assertion that he knew of Mascari’s inclinations and
tastes.

‘Then it would seem that his
murderer has got to be one of his, what do you call them, “tricks”?’ Patta
said, showing his unerring instinct for the obvious.

‘That is, sir, if you think men
of our age are sexually attractive to other men.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking
about, Commissario,’ Patta said, returning to a tone with which Brunetti was
more familiar.

‘We’re all assuming that he was
either a transvestite or a whore and was killed as a result of that, yet the only
evidence we have is the fact that he was found in a dress and the statement of
the man who took his job.’

‘That man is also the director of
a bank, Brunetti,’ Patta said, with his usual reverence for such titles.

‘Which job he has as a result of
the other man’s death.’

‘Bankers do not kill one another,
Brunetti,’ Patta said with the rock-solid certainty so characteristic of him.

Too late, Brunetti realized the
danger here. Patta had only to see the advantage of attributing Mascari’s death
to some violent episode in his deviant private life, and he would be justified
in leaving it to the Mestre police to search for the person responsible and
thus effectively remove Brunetti from any involvement with the case.

‘You’re probably right, sir,’
Brunetti conceded, ‘but this is not the time when we can risk a suggestion in
the press that we have not explored every possible avenue in this case.’

Like a bull at the slightest flip
of the cape, Patta responded to this reference to the media. ‘What are you
suggesting, then?’

‘I think we should, of course,
concentrate all efforts on an examination of the world of the transvestites in
Mestre, but I think we should at least go through the motions of examining the
possibility of some connection to the bank, however remote we both know that to
be.’

Almost with dignity, Patta said, ‘Commissario,
I’m not that far gone yet. If you want to pursue this idea that there might be
some connection between his death and the bank, you are free to do so, but I
want you to bear in mind whom you are dealing with and treat them with the
respect due to their position.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘I’ll leave it to you, then, but
I don’t want you to do anything involving the bank without checking with me
first.’

‘Yes, sir. Will that be all?’

‘Yes.’

Brunetti got to his feet, pushed
the chair closer to the desk, and left the office without another word. He
found Signorina Elettra in the outer office, leafing through the papers in a
file.

‘Signorina,’ he began, ‘have you
managed to get any of that financial information?’

‘About which one?’ she asked with
a small smile.

‘Eh?’ Brunetti asked, entirely at
a loss.

‘Avvocato Santomauro or Signor
Burrasca?’ So preoccupied had Brunetti been by his involvement with Mascari’s
death that he had forgotten that Signorina Elettra had been given the task of
finding out everything she could about the film director as well.

‘Oh, I’d forgotten all about
that,’ Brunetti admitted. The fact that she mentioned Burrasca made it clear to
Brunetti that she wanted to talk about him. ‘What did you find out about him?’

She laid the file to one side of
her desk and looked up at Brunetti as if surprised by his question. ‘That his
apartment in Milano is for sale, that his last three films lost money, and that
the villa in Monaco has already been taken over by his creditors.’ She smiled. ‘Would
you like more?’

Brunetti nodded. How on earth had
she done it?

‘Criminal charges have been
brought against him in the United States for using children in pornographic
films. And all copies of his last film have been confiscated by the police in
Monaco; I can’t find out why.’

‘And his taxes? Are those copies
of his returns you’re looking through?’

‘Oh, no,’ she answered, voice
heavy with disapproval. ‘You know how difficult it is to get any information
from the tax people.’ She paused and added, as he suspected she might, ‘Unless
you know someone who works there. I won’t have them until tomorrow.’

‘And then will you give it all to
the Vice-Questore?’

Signorina Elettra favoured him
with a fierce look. ‘No, Commissario. I’m going to wait at least a few more
days before I do that.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I do not joke about the
Vice-Questore.’

‘But why make him wait?’

‘Why not?’

Brunetti wondered what minor
indignities Patta had heaped on this woman’s head during the last week to have
made him be so soon repaid in this way. ‘And what about Santomauro?’ he asked.

‘Ah, the Avvocato is an entirely
different case. His finances couldn’t possibly be in better condition. He’s got
a portfolio of stocks and bonds that must be worth more than half a billion
lire. His yearly income is declared at two hundred million lire, which is at
least double what a man in his position would normally declare.’

‘What about taxes?’

‘That’s what’s so strange. It
seems that he declares it all. There’s no evidence that he’s cheating in any
way.’

‘You sound like you don’t believe
it,’ Brunetti said.

‘Please, Commissario,’ she said,
giving him another reproachful look, though less fierce than the last. ‘You know
better than to believe that anyone tells the truth on their taxes. That’s what’s
so strange. If he’s declaring everything he earns, then he’s got to have
another source of money that makes his declared income so insignificant he
doesn’t have to cheat on it.’

Brunetti thought about it for a
moment. Given the tax laws, no other interpretation was possible. ‘Does your
computer give you any indication of where that money might be coming from?’

‘No, but it does tell me that he’s
the president of the Lega della Moralità. So that would seem the logical place
to look.’

‘Can you,’ he asked, speaking in
the plural and nodding at the screen in front of her, ‘see what you can find
out about the Lega?’

‘Oh, I’ve already begun that,
Commissario. But the Lega, so far, has been even more elusive than have Signor
Burrasca’s tax returns.’

‘I have confidence you’ll see
your way clear of every obstacle, Signorina.’

She bowed her head, taking it as
no more than her due.

He decided to ask, ‘How is it
that you’re so familiar with the computer network?’

‘Which one?’ she asked, looking
up.

‘Financial.’

‘Oh, I worked with it at my last
job,’ she said and glanced back down at the screen.